


Food Be Thy Medicine

by writingmonsters



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Cooking, Cormoran Strike Human Disaster, Extensive Food Mention, F/M, I Don't Even Know, Vegetables, this is just ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 05:31:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14301846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/writingmonsters
Summary: "Y'know you used to be a very polite young woman, and look what partnership's done to you. Bullying me about my eating habits. I eat vegetables!"The waiter chooses just this moment to reappear with their food. Ilsa's salad, Nick's sandwich, the offending veggie burger, and a plate of fish and chips which is set before Strike who snatches up a chip triumphantly."See?" He demands of the table. "Potato. Vegetable."Robin isn't sure he is joking.





	Food Be Thy Medicine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lindmea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmea/gifts).



> This started as a joke - Corm is ridiculous and a disaster and probably couldn't feed himself if access to fast food and restaurants was revoked. It spiraled into "Cormoran Strike needs to eat a veggie" and became this... thing. I don't know anymore. It's very late, I've lost my mind. It's all pools-of-venetianblue/lindmea's fault. You're welcome.

The Denmark Street office shifts almost effortlessly to make space for Robin. The drawers are reorganized and a rose-tinted lip balm appears among the ballpoint pens. A zipper case of emergency items in the bottom desk drawer. A squat little pot of rust-and-gold colored hardy mums in the window. Her brand of tea kept beneath the counter, alongside Strike's slowly expiring coffee grounds. A shelf in the fridge allocated to her Tupperware lunches.

It makes a stark contrast – the areas where Strike and Robin's lives are laid side by side in the office. Of course, the file folders and client details are organized with the precision innate to Strike's careful-mindedness which had been well-honed by his time in the Royal Military Police, but the rest of his life gave off the air of a weary bachelor in constant disarray.

Nowhere is this clearer, Robin thinks idly, than the kitchenette fridge – littered with half empty cartons of old takeout and the greasy, wrapped carnage of sandwiches past. She sets her own containers – environmentally friendly plastiware – on the top shelf to chill until lunch and sets about clearing out the worst of the detritus.

"There's no need for you to be doing that." Of course it's a little late for Cormoran to be arguing, as he's appeared only after the bin bag is two-thirds full of old lo mein and oozy sandwich wrappers.

Robin absolutely notices the guilty way the plastic bag of Chinese food is not-quite-hidden behind his leg. She brushes the hair back off her face, saying "well someone had to. Unless, of course, you _meant_ to be growing science experiments in your food."

And it's just terrible really, Cormoran thinks. The wicked twinkle in her eyes could get her off on murder.

He lifts his eyebrows a fraction, wincing. "That bad?"

"Ooh," Robin blows out a breath. "Noxious."

"Lemme take it down to the bin then."

Strike leaves his lunch on the corner of the desk, making a grabby hand at the garbage bag which Robin is all too happy to hand over. With the refrigerator looking decidedly less harrowing, she decides it is safe to retrieve her own lunch without the precaution of a Hazmat suit and sets about putting her leftover zucchini pasta in order.

She is snapping thin carrot sticks over the curls of zucchini when Strike comes thumping unevenly back up the stairs to retrieve his takeaway from her desk. And he pauses, looks over the Tupperware container of zucchini, carrot, red pepper, and spinach with a wary eye.

"Your spaghetti's green."

"It's zucchini noodles."

"Ah." He looks vaguely affronted by the notion. Robin offers him a carrot stick – an unexpected habit picked up in her time working with Cormoran, the frequency of food offered and accepted between them. If she thinks about it long enough, she expects it has something to do with the chain smoking and an oral fixation.

But she absolutely is not going to psychoanalyze her partner.

He scoops up his own lunch, refusing the sliver of carrot with a "nah, you can keep the rabbit food" and retreats into the back office to pour over surveillance photos from yesterday, blown up on the laptop screen.

Robin drops the bright orange slice into her salad and wonders when she became comfortable enough – with Cormoran, with her place as his partner in the office – to call after him "you might use a bit more rabbit food. Would do you good."

The deep, resounding " _ha_ " that echoes from the back office is delightful.

* * *

 

The next day they have lunch with Nick and Ilsa.

It's meant to be a work lunch – consulting with Ilsa about the legal ins and outs of a fraud case they've slowly been picking over – but Nick had freed up a few hours away from his practice, and Robin hadn't minded in the slightest. What little she knew of the Herberts so far, she had loved. Nick, with his good humor and exaggerated energy. Ilsa, bossy and warm and forever rolling her eyes knowingly toward Robin at the boys' antics.

The café is small and brightly lit, a halfway point between the Herberts and the Denmark Street office selected on Ilsa's recommendation. Nick catches sight of them first and waves them over to the table with a rush of loud and disparaging commentary regarding the latest Arsenal loss, which Cormoran dismisses with a groan and a beaming smile. Ilsa is quick to embrace them both, squeezing Robin like an older sister.

"Now then," says Ilsa when the pleasantries have been exchanged and they are all seated in a circle around the table. "Your client is in bed with the worst bloody fraudster I've ever seen – terrible, just _very bad_ at the committing of fraud – and that's only what I know having looked over those documents you gave me. Honestly, did your man even _read_ what he signed?"

Considering his impressions of their flustered, flighty client Cormoran concedes "probably not."

That gets a laugh and the sound of their enthusiasm finally motivates the bored-looking waiter from his perch behind the counter to collect their orders.

Robin orders a veggie burger, passes her sticky, laminated menu to the waiter with a "thanks" and turns to find Strike staring at her as though she has grown a second head. Wary, she says " _what_?"

His eyebrows do an interesting thing where they lift toward his hairline and frown, deeply curious all at the same time. In the same flabbergasted, disdainful tone he has used to ask about pop culture phenomena, he asks her "what the fuck is a veggie burger?"

Robin… honestly is not sure what to do with that question.

"It's vegetables in the form of a hamburger," Nick supplies helpfully. "We had 'em on the grill last summer when you were over for the game?"

And then Cormoran's face goes through an entirely different set of expressions. Revulsion. Horror. His eyes bulge and his mouth works through several silent attempts to start a sentence before he finally gets out "Christ. Is _that_ what that was? No wonder; I thought it was just your cooking."

" _Hey_."

Ilsa shakes her head despairingly at Robin, a smirk playing around the corners of her mouth. And Robin, studying the variety of expressions on Strike's broad face, almost can't keep the words from slipping out, thinking of the bulging bin bag and old takeaway. "Was that the last time you ate a proper vegetable, then?"

Nick lets loose a howl of glee. Ilsa beams.

Affronted, Cormoran turns to gape at Robin – but she catches the mirth in his crinkling eyes. "Y'know you used to be a very polite young woman, and look what partnership's done to you. Bullying me about my eating habits. I eat vegetables!"

The waiter chooses just this moment to reappear with their food. Ilsa's salad, Nick's sandwich, the offending veggie burger, and a plate of fish and chips which is set before Strike who snatches up a chip triumphantly.

"See?" He demands of the table. " _Potato_. Vegetable."

Robin isn't sure he is joking.

Nick makes a wheezing sound like he might have aspirated some of his sandwich. "Fries and crisps don't count, mate" is his sage pronouncement. "If it is not in recognizable potato form, it no longer counts as a veg."

Beside him, Ilsa watches over the top of her spectacles, taking a delicate bite of salad.

"I got extra jalapenos on my sandwich the other day. _Vegetable_."

Nick looks aggrieved. The bite he takes from his sandwich is far more violent than a sourdough BLT might have otherwise warranted. "Oggy," he says around the mouthful. "Your fucking digestive tract is the stuff of nightmares."

"Have you considered something that isn't pickled or processed?" Ilsa offers coolly.

Robin, recalling Nick's career as a gastroenterologist, suddenly wishes she hasn’t started them on this line of conversation. This is starting to be far too much information about the dietary habits and functions of her boss-cum-partner.

From her vantage point at his elbow, she sees the smile lines at the corners of Cormoran’s eyes deepen. "Pizza two days ago – had mushrooms on it."

Robin barely manages to stifle a snort.

Nick, tormented, drops his head into his hands. Says "if you try and tell me that you think carrot cake counts as a vegetable, Oggs, I don't know that our years of friendship will be able to take the strain."

Later, when they are lying in bed together, Ilsa will settle with her husband’s arms tight around her middle and they will laugh and laugh. She will say softly “Robin’s just a darling, isn’t she? Really gives Corm what-for.”

Nick, chuckling into her hair, will say “I don’t think I’ve seen the man looking so happy since before Charlotte.”

“Pity she’s engaged.”

And, rolling her over, Nick will kiss his brilliant wife and remind her “none of our business, is it?”

* * *

 

In the end, the ghosts of Styrofoam containers and debates about what really counts as a proper serving of fruits and vegetables linger enough in Robin’s mind that she finds herself staring absently at the pots littering the stovetop and the resulting foodstuffs, having cooked far more than the usual portion.

It’s a good thing, she thinks, that Matt doesn’t pay a bit of attention to the goings-on in the kitchen. She would not relish trying to explain the sudden appearance of the extra servings to his sullen face. Still, the extra Tupperware container is slipped furtively into her purse in the morning before he can see. She isn't interested in starting an argument.

Cormoran is already out when she arrives in the office – having risen at an ungodly hour to catch the latest object of their surveillance, a nurse, going about her morning routine on the way to the hospital. He has left a sticky note on the computer monitor for her.

_R,_

_Please follow up on internet searches for Bored Housewife #3. Be back around 11._

_-C_

There is a wonky smiley face in the bottom left corner of the note that leaves her grinning a bit ridiculously.

Robin does the searches, prints off a few screengrabs of pertinent photos, tweets, and typo-riddled Facebook posts. When she resurfaces from the maze of social media profiles, it is 10:45 and she sets about reheating the Tupperware containers of pasta in the kitchenette’s temperamental microwave.

She leaves the steaming bowl on Strike’s desk in the inner office and settles back at her own desk, typing out emails one-handed between forkfuls of vermicelli noodles and butternut squash.

Cormoran doesn’t reappear until 11:15. Slump-shouldered and heavy-footed, he shrugs his way out of the thick greatcoat and manages a perfunctory “hi”, heading directly for the sanctuary of the inner office.

“Rough morning?” Robin calls after him.

“The first fucking thing she did – went for a bloody run.”

Robin makes a mental note to handle surveillance on that particular case for the duration. She returns to her typing.

“What’s this?” Strike reappears in the doorway of the office, holding the Tupperware container very carefully in one large hand, as though it might explode.

“It’s lunch.” Robin doesn’t look up. Her typing doesn’t even slow.

“ _Why_?” He draws out the single syllable, one eyebrow quirking curiously upward.

Robin abandons the pretense of the email, pushing away from the computer to look up at him from her rolling chair. She shrugs, tossing a length of rosy gold hair over her shoulder. “Figured you could stand for something other than takeaway.”

“ _Thanks_.” Cormoran’s broad, rumpled face softens. Then he frowns, puzzled. “The hell’s in it?”

“Noodles, spinach, some spices, butternut squash – what’s _that_ face?” Again, he’d gone through several subtle, complicated expressions at once and Robin hadn’t managed to quite pick out what any one of them had meant.

Cormoran sighs, and he looks a little bit exasperated and a little bit touched by the whole business. "Look Robin,” he says “I appreciate the gesture, but you don't need to feed me because you're afraid I'm gonna get scurvy."

"I'm _not_ …" Robin sputters, waving a dismissive hand at him. "It's just leftovers. I made too much extra."

She’s sure he doesn’t believe the lie for a minute, flimsy as it seems, but does her the courtesy of saying nothing more. Instead, he takes a large forkful of the pasta-and-veggies and pronounces it “really good” with a hint of surprise.

“Thanks Robin,” he says again, with that fond, genuine softness in his low voice. She spots the hints of sparkle in his eyes when he ducks his head over the bowl. “And it’s even got real, proper vegetables in it!”

Robin considers chucking the stapler at him. But if she accidentally continues to make too much for dinner one or two nights every few weeks, it’s nobody’s business but her own.


End file.
